Avoiding Normativity

One important aspect while designing Feeling the Past was to avoid teaching the player a specific way of thinking about objects as sources. My goal was to simulate my own (and Peter N. Miller's) experience of realizing the possible benefits of objects as sources by coming in contact with them. By having the players interpret the tasks for themselves—choosing a student-centered pedagogical approach, which is deemed more appropriate for developing critical thinkers, self-sufficient learners, and problem solvers—based on their own interests as historians, a greater learning effect can be achieved than by displaying a singular approach to object analysis (Lahnwong, 2019). For the same reason—even though this was criticized during the beta with the DigiZeit members during May—the end of the game does not have a final page, in which the main character reflects upon their day and draws conclusions. This would diminish the learning effect gained by having the players think for themselves about how they approached the tasks throughout the game.